Part 13 (1/2)
The Mexicans had shut up the markets, and no food was to be got. Cortez sent to open them. He sent another messenger off to the coast to say all was safe, and that he should soon conquer the rebels. But here, a cleverer man than I must tell the story.
”But scarcely had his messenger been gone half an hour, when he returned breathless with terror and covered with wounds. 'The city,' he said, 'was all in arms! the drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon be upon them! He spoke truth. It was not long before a hoa.r.s.e sullen sound became audible, like that of the roaring of distant waters. It grew louder and louder, till from the parapet surrounding the enclosure, the great avenues which led to it might be seen dark with the ma.s.ses of warriors, who came rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress. At the same time the terraces and flat roofs in the neighbourhood were thronged with combatants, brandis.h.i.+ng their missiles, who seemed to have risen up as if by magic! It was a spectacle to appall the stoutest. The Spanish forces were crowded into a small compact ma.s.s in the palace, and the whole army could be a.s.sembled at a moment's notice. No sooner, therefore, did the trumpet call to arms, than every soldier was at his post--the cavalry mounted, the artillerymen at their guns, and the archers and arquebusiers stationed so as to give the a.s.sailants a warm reception. On they came, with the companies, or irregular ma.s.ses, into which the mult.i.tude was divided, rus.h.i.+ng forward each in its own dense column, with many a gay banner displayed, and many a bright gleam of light reflected from helmet, arrow, and spear head, as they were tossed about in their disorderly array. As they drew near, the Aztecs set up a hideous yell, which rose far above the sound of sh.e.l.l and atabat, and their other rude instruments of warlike melody. They followed this by a tempest of missiles--stones, darts, arrows--which fell thick as rain on the besieged. The Spaniards waited till the foremost column had arrived, when a general discharge of artillery and arquebusses swept the ranks of the a.s.sailants, and mowed them down by hundreds.” {222} . . .
So the fight raged on with fury for two days, while the Aztecs, Indians who only fought by day, howled out to the wretched Spaniards every night.
On the third day Cortez brought out the Emperor Montezuma, and commanded him to quiet the Indians. The unhappy man obeyed him. He had made up his mind that these Spaniards were the white G.o.ds, who were to take his kingdom from him, and he submitted to them like a sheep to the butcher.
He went up to a tower in all his royal robes and jewels. At the sight the Indians who filled the great square below were all hushed--thousands threw themselves on their faces; and to their utter astonishment, he asked them what they meant by rebelling. He was no prisoner, he said, but the Spaniard's guest and friend. The Spaniards would go peaceably, if they would let them. In any case he was the Spaniard's friend.
The Indians answered him by a yell of fury and contempt. He was a dog--a woman--fit only to weave and spin; and a volley of stones and arrows flew at him. One struck him on the head and dropped him senseless. The Indians set up a howl of terror; and frightened at what they had done, fled away ashamed.
The wretched Emperor refused comfort, food, help, tore the bandages from his wounds, and died in two days. He had been a bad man, a cannibal, and a butcher, blood-thirsty and covetous, a ravisher of virgins, and a tyrant to his people. But the Spaniards had got to love him in spite of all; for a true friend he had been to them, and a fearful loss to them just now. The battle went on worse than ever. The great idol temple commanded the palace, and was covered with Mexican warriors. And next day Cortez sent a party to storm it. They tried to get up the winding stairs, and were driven back three times with fearful loss. Cortez, though he had but one hand to fight with, sallied out and cleared the pyramid himself, after a fearful hand-to-hand fight of three hours, up the winding stairs, along the platforms, and at last upon the great square on the top, an acre in breadth. Every Mexican was either killed, or hurled down the sides. The idol, the war G.o.d, with its gold disc of bleeding hearts smoking before it, was hurled down and the whole accursed place set on fire and destroyed. Three hundred houses round were also burnt that night; but of what use?
The Spaniards were starving, hemmed in by hundreds of thousands. They were like a single wasp inside a bee-hive. Let him kill the bees by hundreds, he must be killed himself at last. He made up his mind to evacuate the city, to leave all his conquests behind him. It was a terrible disappointment, but it had to be done.
They marched out by night in good order, with all their guns and ammunition, and with immense plunder; as much of poor Montezuma's treasures as they could carry. The old hands took very little; they knew what they were about. The fresh ones from Narvaez's army loaded themselves with gold and jewels, and had to pay dear for them. Cortez, I ought to tell you, took good care of Dona Marina. He sent her forward under a strong guard of Tlascalans, with all the other women. The great street was crossed by many ca.n.a.ls. Then the causeway across the lake, two miles long, was crossed by more ca.n.a.ls, and at every one of these the Indians had taken away the bridges. Cortez knew that, and had made a movable bridge; but he had only time to make one, and that of course had to be taken up at the rear, and carried forward to the front every time they crossed a d.y.k.e; and that made endless delay. As long as they were in the city, however, all went well; but the moment they came out upon the lake causeway, out thundered the serpent-skin drums from the top of every temple, the conch sh.e.l.ls blew, and out swarmed the whole hive of bees, against the one brave wasp who was struggling. The Spaniards cleared the d.y.k.e by cavalry and artillery, and got to the first ca.n.a.l, laid down the bridge, and over slowly but safely, amid a storm of stones and arrows. They got to the second ca.n.a.l, fifteen or twenty feet broad.
Why, in G.o.d's name, was not the bridge brought on? Instead of the bridge came news from the rear. The weight of the artillery had been too great for the bridge, and it was jammed fast. And there they were on a narrow d.y.k.e fifty feet broad, in the midst of the lake, in the dark midnight, with countless thousands of Indians, around, before, behind, and the lord have mercy on them!
What followed you may guess--though some of the brave men who fought there, and who wrote the story themselves--which I have read--hardly knew.
The cavalry tried to swim their horses over. Some got safe, others rolled into the lake. The infantry followed pell mell, cut down like sheep by arrows and stones, by the terrible gla.s.s swords of the Indians, who crowded round their canoes. The waggons prest on the men, the guns on them, the rear on them again, till in a few minutes the ca.n.a.l was choked with writhing bodies of men and horses, cannon, gold and treasure inestimable, over which the survivors scrambled to the further bank.
Cortez, who was helping the rear forded the gap on horseback, and hurried on to find a third and larger ca.n.a.l which no one dare cross. But the Indians were not so thick here, and plunging into the water they got through as they could. And woe that night to the soldier who had laden himself with Indian treasure. Dragged to the bottom by the weight of their plunder, hundreds died there drowned by that very gold to find which they had crossed the seas, and fought so many a b.l.o.o.d.y battle.
What is the use of making a sad story long? They reached the sh.o.r.e, and sat down like men desperate and foredone in a great idol temple. Several of their finest officers, three-fourths of their men, were killed and missing, three-fourths too of their horses--all Cortez's papers, all their cannon, all their treasure. They had not even a musket left.
Nothing to face the Indians with but twenty-three crippled horses, a few damaged crossbows, and their good old swords. Cortez's first question was for poor Dona Marima, and strange to say she was safe. The trusty Tlascalan Indians had brought her through it all. Alvarado the lieutenant was safe too. If he had been the cause of all that misery, he did his best to make up for it. He stayed behind fighting at the last ca.n.a.l till all were over, and the Indians closing round him. Then he set his long lance in the water, and to the astonishment of both armies, leapt the ca.n.a.l clean, while the Indians shouted, ”This is indeed the Tonatiah, the child of the Sun.” The gap is shown now, and it is called to this day, Alvarado's Leap. G.o.d forgive him! for if he was a cruel man, he was at least a brave one!
Cortez sat down, a ruined man, and as he looked round for his old comrades, and missed one face after another, he covered his face with his hands and cried like a child.
And was he a ruined man? Never less. No man is ruined till his pluck is gone. He got his starving and s.h.i.+vering men together, and away for the mountains to get back to the friendly people of Tlascala. The people followed them along the hills shouting, ”Go on! you will soon find yourselves where you cannot escape.” But he went on--till he saw what they meant.
Waiting for him in a pa.s.s was an army of Indians--two hundred thousand, some writers say--all fresh and fully armed. What could he do? To surrender, was to be sacrificed every man to the idols; so he marched on.
He had still twenty horses, and he put ten on each flank. He bade his men not strike with their sword but give the point. He made a speech to his men. They had beaten the Indians, he said, many a time at just as fearful odds. G.o.d had brought them through so far, G.o.d would not desert them, for they were fighting on His side against the heathen; and so he went straight at the vast army of Indians. They were surrounded, swallowed up by them for a few minutes. In the course of an hour the Spaniards had routed them utterly with immense slaughter.
Of all the battles I ever read of, this battle of Otumba is one of the most miraculous. Some say that Cortez conquered Mexico by gunpowder: he had none then, neither cannon nor musket. The sword and lance did it all, and they in the hands of men worn out with famine, cold, and fatigue, and I had said broken-hearted into the bargain. But there was no breaking those men's hearts--what won that battle, what won Mexico, was the indomitable pluck of the white man, before which the Indian, whether American or Hindoo, never has stood, and never will stand to the world's end. The Spaniards proved it in America of old, though they were better armed than the Indian. But there are those who have proved it upon Indians as well armed as themselves. Ay, my friends, I should be no Englishman, if while I told this story, I could help thinking all the while of our brave comrades in India, who have conquered as Cortez conquered, and against just as fearful odds; whose enemies were armed, not with copper arrows and gla.s.s knives, but with European muskets, European cannon, and most dangerous of all, European discipline. I say Cortez did wonders in his time; but I say too that our Indian heroes have done more, and done it in a better cause.
And that is the history of the conquest of Mexico. What, you may ask, is that the end? When we are leaving the Spaniards a worn-out and starving handful struggling back for refuge to Tlascala, without anything but their old swords; do you call _that_ a conquest?
Yes, I do; just as I call the getting back to Cawnpore, after the relief of Lucknow, the conquest of India. It showed which was the better man, Englishman or sepoy, just as the retreat from Mexico showed which was the better man, Spaniard or Indian. The sepoys were cowed from that day, just as the Mexicans were cowed after Otumba. They had fought with all possible odds on their side, and been _licked_; and when men are once cowed, all the rest is merely a work of time.
So it was with Cortez. He went back to Tlascala. He got by mere accident, as we say, a reinforcement of Spaniards. He stirred up all the Indian nations round, who were weary of the cruel tyranny of the Mexicans; he made large boats to navigate the lake, and he marched back upon Mexico the next year with about six hundred Spaniards and nine cannon--about half the force which he had had before; but with a hundred thousand Indian allies, who, like the st.u.r.dy Tlascalans, proved as true to him as steel. Truly, if he was not a great general, who is?
He marched back, taking city after city as he went, and besieged Mexico.
It was a long and weary siege. The Indians fought like fiends. The causeways had to be taken yard by yard; but Cortez, wise by sad experience, put his cannon into the boats and swept them from the water.
Then the city had to be taken house by house. The Indians drove him back again and again, till they were starved to skeletons, and those who used to eat their enemies were driven to eat each other. Still they would not give in. At last, after many weeks of fighting, it was all over. The glorious Mexican empire was crumbled to dust. Those proud n.o.bles, who used to fat themselves upon the bodies of all the nations round, were reduced to a handful of starving beggars. The cross of Christ was set up, where the hearts of human creatures were offered to foul idols, and Mexico has been ever since the property of the Spaniards, a Christian land.
And what became of Cortez? He died sadly and in disgrace. He sowed, and other men reaped. If he was cruel and covetous, he was punished for it in this world heavily enough. He had many n.o.ble qualities though. He was a better man than those around him; and one good thing he did, which was to sweep off the face of the earth as devilish a set of tyrants as ever defiled the face of the earth. Give him all due honour for it, and let him rest in peace. G.o.d shall judge him and not we.